Trump and NATO – Don’t Shoot The Messenger

As is now commonplace, the response of the predominantly left leaning media to President Trump’s “muscle flexing” at the recent NATO Meeting was an emotionally gross overreaction.

President Trump made two basic points to our NATO allies in Europe in July 11:

Trump called upon all NATO countries to simply honor the pledge that every NATO country made in 2014 to earmark 2% of each NATO countries’ GDP to NATO which would increase the ability of NATO countries to defend themselves against aggressive expansion tactics -primarily from Russia; and

Trump exposed the fact that a former senior German Minister has been found to have been the beneficiary of contracts related to the sale ofgas pipelines to Russia. Trump was, in a word, simply underscoring the fact that before our European allies point fingers at the USA for any alleged financial ties with Russia, they ought to look in their own back yards.

On both of the aforementioned points, Trump is completely correct and within his right as the leader of the Western World. The criticism that was leveled at Trump that is justified however is not the substance of Trumps arguments but at best, the manner in which he chose to deliver the message. By the latter, I mean the fact that allegedly Trump was very outspoken and apparently was heard to use language that was offensive.

While I have no problem people criticizing the President for being ‘rough around the edges’ at times, we need to learn to learn to distinguish between the message and the manner in which it was delivered.

Antony Gordon is a Managing Director of MGO and the Chairman of the Board of Advisors of “America Voices in Israel”